Category Archives: Book Notes

Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION

Posted on Tuesday 4 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Why We Never Think Alone” (Riverhead Books, March 2017, 296pp including 30pp acknowledgements, notes, and index.) This is a book that I’ve thought of as a companion to the O’Connor/Weatherall book I just reviewed ever since they’ve been sitting … Continue reading →

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Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, THE MISINFORMATION AGE

Posted on Sunday 2 March 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How False Beliefs Spread”(Yale University Press, 2019, 266pp, including 80pp of notes, bibliography, acknowledgements, and index) This is an interesting enough book that wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It seems right up my alley: why do so many … Continue reading →

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Two More Books of Futuristic Art

Posted on Thursday 27 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

FUTURE PERFECT: Vintage Futuristic Graphics, ed. Jim Heimann (Taschen, 2002, unpaginated) DRIVING THROUGH FUTURES PAST: Mid-20th Century Automotive Design, by Hampton C. Wayt (Kythe Publishing, Feb. 206, 59pp) Here are two more books that I read the same couple days … Continue reading →

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Isaac Asimov, FUTUREDAYS

Posted on Wednesday 26 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “A Nineteenth-Century Vision of the Year 2000” (Henry Holt, trade paperback, 1986, 96pp) This is a thin little book I’ve had for nearly 40 years, since it was published. It’s ostensibly about a set of “cigarette cards” (presumably included … Continue reading →

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Mark Lilla, IGNORANCE AND BLISS

Posted on Monday 17 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “On Wanting Not to Know” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Dec. 2024, 239p, including 12p notes and acknowledgments) This is a little book published just a couple months ago that appealed for a couple reasons. First, I read the author’s … Continue reading →

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Richard Dawkins: THE MAGIC OF REALITY

Posted on Friday 14 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: How We Know What’s Really True Illustrated by Dave McKean (Free Press, Oct. 2011, 271pp, including 6p of index and acknowledgements) When I was organizing my nonfiction books notes and posts last December, I was surprised that I had … Continue reading →

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Elizabeth Kolbert, H IS FOR HOPE

Posted on Saturday 8 February 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Climate Change from A to Z” Illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook (Ten Speed Press, 159pp, c2023, published March 2024) <Amazon> This is a book I bought on the basis of the author’s name (I quite admired her book of a … Continue reading →

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Heather Cox Richardson, DEMOCRACY AWAKENING, post 3

Posted on Sunday 26 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Summary thoughts about this book. Richardson tells the story of the past century, of the previous four years (before the book was published in 2019), and of the nation’s first century, in a matter-of-fact style that expresses not so much … Continue reading →

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Heather Cox Richardson, DEMOCRACY AWAKENING, post 2

Posted on Sunday 26 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Continuing my fairly detailed summary notes of this book. The second part of this book is about the ascendance of Trump, finishing with the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The third part of the looks … Continue reading →

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Heather Cox Richardson, DEMOCRACY AWAKENING, post 1

Posted on Sunday 26 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Notes on the State of America” (Viking, Sep 2023, xvii + 286pp, including 30p of notes and index) Heather Cox Richardson is a historian who has become well-known, in addition to several earlier books, for her newsletter called Letters … Continue reading →

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